Wedding jam

I've been to a bunch of weddings in my time. None of them were quite like this.

On Wednesday, Kathy Thomas and Doug Davis threw a big wedding/jam session at a Tucson bar called the Boondocks. Like most of their guests, I received my invitation on Facebook. Unsure if I could make it, I asked them how far in advance they needed the RSVP. Kathy said they didn't need a solid head count, so no pressure.

Luckily, I was able to go. After a brief, fairly traditional ceremony, Doug's band Flipside played, with somebody filling in for Doug on drums, and Doug doing the occasional vocal. Flipside was followed by Kathy's new band, tentatively named KT and the Plan B. Doug and Kathy are amazingly talented, as I've mentioned before, so they couldn't have done any better in terms of wedding music.

Next came the jam. They'd provided equipment, so I got to play a few songs with a few other talented folks, and I didn't even have to drag my keyboard along.

Wedding receptions often come with little party favors. They don't usually come with their own backline.

Well done, happy couple. And congratulations!

Interview redux

Don Martin, the dude who interviewed me for BSceneLive last year, has reposted our interview on his blog. If you missed it the first time, enjoy!

Memory fail

One of my songs was running through my head the other day. But I hadn't practiced it in forever, and big chunks of the lyrics were missing. Even when I made an effort to recall them, they continued to hide.

No biggie. This happens to me from time to time. I made a mental note to look the song up later.

The surprise came when I got around to doing it. As I read my forgotten lyrics, there was no sense of recognition. No "Oh, of course, that's how it goes." It was like seeing them for the first time. As if somebody else wrote them.

Maybe this kind of thing is inevitable after you've produced a certain number of songs. Trying to console me about my failing memory, a friend of mine said that she used to work for a magazine where not every story got a byline. She and her colleagues frequently couldn't remember which of them had written a particular article.

Still, it feels weird. I'm not one of those songwriters who can create an entire first draft in my car on the way to the bank. I struggle for almost every line. If I have to fight so hard to bring the words into existence, they ought to stick around without any further effort on my part.

Oh well. One good thing came out of my little memory fail: I realized that I hadn't backed up my lyrics since many new songs ago. Now if my hard drive fails, I won't lose any of the words forever.

'Tis the season, I guess

Summer lingers for a long time in Tucson. After many weeks in the 90s, the weather finally got cold enough today that I wore a winter jacket. Not a very heavy one, but still a winter jacket.

Coincidentally, this was also the first day Mix FM started in on All Christmas Music All the Time.

On November 11.

Has to be some kind of record.

The songwriter workshop conundrum

The time had come for another songwriter workshop and I was psyched. Ron and I had managed to make scratch recordings of our four most recent songs just days before. The ink was barely dry on the last one. The conundrum: would I choose to shop the tune I was most proud of, or one I knew still had some problems?

I really wanted people to hear the song I was most proud of. It would have the best chance of impressing them. Maybe I'd get the coveted (mythical) comment, "You don't need to change a thing." But, of course, the problematic song was the one I needed help with.

In the end I went with the problematic song. I'm happy I did. The feedback I received helped me tear down the corner I'd painted myself into. I wrote a few alternative endings, and while I eventually narrowed them down to one, all of them were better than what I had.

The problematic song was the right choice.

I still want my fellow songwriters to hear the most-proud-of song, though. Maybe next time ...

Politically invisible

Today is the last day of Invisible Illness Week. About two weeks ago I realized it was coming and thought, Already? Damn, I have nothing new to say.

Then I read a blog post arguing that the whole "invisible illness" concept was harmful and we shouldn't be using it to raise awareness anyway.

But I'm getting ahead of myself. For those of you who are just tuning in and have no idea what an invisible illness is, I'll quote from an older post:

What makes an illness or disability invisible? Two things. First, the people suffering with it often drop out of sight. Your friends don't hear from you for a while, figure you've lost touch for the usual reasons friends do, and have no idea that your chronic pain or crushing fatigue prevents you from leaving the house most days. Second, if they do happen to see you again, you probably appear perfectly normal. Your disease hasn't caused you to break out in scary hives or turn blue. The very fact that you're out in public probably means you're feeling/functioning better than usual.

So advocacy for invisible illnesses like ME, fibromyalgia, Lyme disease, and Gulf War disease should be pretty straightforward, right? Point out how those diseases exist even though they're hidden from view, and you dispel the prejudices of the previously uninformed.

According to Samuel Wales of The Kafka Pandemic, however, there are a number of problems with this approach. The one that stood out to me was this: healthy folks aren't prejudiced against all so-called invisible illnesses. We accept that diabetes is real, even though diabetics managing their disease don't look any different than anybody else. Patients with HIV/AIDS seem healthy much of the time, and no one accuses them of faking it. Appearing healthy, or being housebound and hidden from view, doesn't automatically mean people won't believe you.

The problem is that certain diseases are denigrated. Politically invisible.

While I'm not sure I'm convinced the term "invisible illness" is actively harmful, I like Samuel's alternative approach. When faced with a person who's skeptical about a disease that doesn't always make people look sick, respond with this: "Would you say that about AIDS?"

RIP Joe South

Aw, man.

After Jon Lord of Deep Purple died, I found out that Joe South had written my favorite Deep Purple song, "Hush." I'd known him mostly for "Games People Play."

Curious, I looked up him on Wikipedia and skimmed his biography. I don't remember much of it. I just remember being happy to find out he was still alive. Not that I had any reason to believe that he wasn't, just that famous musicians tend to check out early in various cliched ways.

He managed to avoid cliches, but 72 is still too young as far as I'm concerned.